Understanding Fair Use

Fair use is an exception to copyright that allows usage of creative works without the copyright holder's permission. However, it only applies in pretty special situations. Let's break down when fair use might come into play, and the four requirements that need to be met.

Fair use is very much a United States-based idea. Canada has a similar concept in their laws, called "fair dealing," and most other countries in the world do recognize exceptions to copyright law for educational purposes.

While many of the conceptual points of fair use may apply to you if you live outside of the United States, and are important to understand, the details we get into are going to be specific to the United States. If you have questions about fair use or similar concepts in your country and how they apply to your own work, please consult an experienced intellectual property attorney.

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[Copywrite Basics with Chris Zabriskie, Fair Use and Public Domain Deep Dive]

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[Chris Zabriskie] So we know what can be copyrighted and what can't.

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And we know how long copyrights last.

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Is that it?

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Nobdy can use your work for any reason without your permission until you've been dead for the better part of a century?

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Not exactly.

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You might have heard about something called fair use.

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Fair use is an exception to copyright,

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to that exclusive right that copyright gives you.

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And while the copyright is still in effect,

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people can make use of your copyrighted work

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without your permission.

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But only for very specific purposes.

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News reporting for example.

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Think of your local television news

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and all the times that copyrighted or trademarked material

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makes it into the background of one of their reports.

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Now imagine that they had to get perrmission

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in advance from every one of those copyright holders

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before they could run that story.

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That's crazy.

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Fair use is essential for freedom of the press to even exist.

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Fair use can also cover educational use

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like this video series.

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Schools and other educational institutions around the world

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can use copyrighted material in the service of teaching.

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So if you've ever had a teacher show a film clip in your class to illustrate a concept,

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you have fair use to thank.

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Works of criticism are protected and so are libraries, and even search engines like Google.

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Fair use is very important for them to do what they do.

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Now you may never actually run into a situation where you need to worry about fair use, honestly.

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But it's an incrediibly important concept to understand.

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As a creator of anything creative, even websites,

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it's important to know the limitations your copyright has.

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So say you make an iPhone app and then some website writes a negative review of it,

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the review has got videos and pictures of your app in it.

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And you're made that review is negative.

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And so you want to take it down—you want to take the pictures and video down.

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You can't do that, and if you tried to sue them chances are all you'd do is waste a bunch of money.

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Or say something you've written gets used to teach something in a college class.

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You might not claim fair use on anything you use,

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but others might on things that you create.

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And if you ever get a job at a library, a news organization, or even an educational company like Treehouse here,

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it's even more important to understand.

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For usage of copyrighted material to be fair use,

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it has to pass a sort of theoretical test.

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Now this is from the United States copyright law here.

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For something to be considered fair use, one has to determine the purpose and character of the use,

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including whether such use is of a commercial nature of is for nonprofit educational purposes,

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the natures of the copyrighted work,

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the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole,

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and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

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All right, let's slow down a little bit and take each one of those one by one,